Links to your site is one of the things that Google looks for to decide how important your site is, and therefore its ranking.

Not all links have an equal value. What determines the value of the link is its relevancy to the page it is linked to. The more relevant the page is the greater the value of the link. If not just the page, but the whole site is relevant the link is even more valuable.

Here are some ways to get quality links to your site:

Reciprocal Links.

Reciprocal links were once of real value. Today they do not have the value they once had. It is still good to use them providing the site you are linking to is relevant to your industry or business.

Article Writing.

This is the best way of creating links that can be viewed as very relevant. It is a long slow tedious journey as it means regularly writing articles and submitting them to article directories. These articles will link back to your site by leaving a hyperlink in the bio section. Most article sites will not allow hyperlinks in the body of the article. You can submit your articles to hundreds of article directories. Here are some you should submit to: EzineArticles.com, ArticleCity.com, and GoArticles.com.

Link Farms

Go as fast as you can away from these. Links to link farms can downgrade your legitimate links. Link farms are sites with scrolling pages of just links. They are viewed as spammers by the search engines. If you associate your site with them your site by association will also be viewed as part of the spammer’s network.

Directories

Links from directories can help significantly. Directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo and other reputable directories can greatly help you in your rankings. If you can get your site into DMOZ you will reap the benefits. The difficulty is getting it included. Search for the best category and submit your site every 4 - 6 months until you are listed.

With Yahoo it is easier to list your site but it will cost you. Yahoo charges $299 per year to list your site. The listing can be very valuable as Google looks at Yahoo directory as an authority.

One other thing that is very important is links anchor text. What is this? These are the words that are linked to a hyperlink. For example; To download this product clicks here. The click here is the anchor text. It is not wrong to have “click here” it is appropriate in certain areas. If you were to search the keyword “click here” you will find Adobe to be the site listed for that keyword. This is because there are thousands of sites that point to the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

An anchor text link that uses the keyword or key phrase is far better. For example if you were targeting the keyword phrase; “low cost web hosting” You would anchor it this way: “to really benefit from our low cost web hosting here are some pointers” The keyword phrase we are targeting is our anchor text.

These are just a few of the many things you can do to increase your ranking with Google.